The Misery Cord

Misericord. The Misery Cord. It was lettered on a wall. I knew that cord, how it’s tough to break however hard you haul. My cousin sharefarmed, and so got half: half dignity, half hope, half income, for his full work. To get a place of his own took his whole lifetime. Some pluck the misery chord from habit or for luck, whatever they feel, some to deceive, and some for the tune — but sometimes it’s real. Milking bails, flannel shirts, fried breakfasts, these were our element, and doubling on horses, and shouting Score! at a dog yelping on a hot scent, but an ambulance racing on our back road is bad news for us all: the house of community is about to lose a plank from its wall. Grief is nothing you can do, but do; worst work for least reward, pulling your heart out through both eyes with tugs of the misery cord. I looked at my cousin’s farm, where he’d just built his family a house of their own, and I looked down into Fred’s next house, its clay walls of bluish maroon. Just one man has snapped the misery cord and lived. He said once was enough. A poem is an afterlife on earth: Christ grant us the other half.